NYT's Nazi Next Door lost job, fled home

[Madner Kami]

Nazis are people. Nazis are shitty people that should be called out and confronted whenever possible, but they are still people.

[Draco Dracul]

I'm 1/4 ethnically Jew, my Jewish great-grandparents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s to escape persecution, so I really don't appreciate the insinuation that I am sympathetic towards Nazism.

...I'm sure you don't want to be viewed that way. I'm sure you don't think of yourself that way. But you are defending Nazis, sympathetically or not, in the name of "polite society."

I am defending human decency. Nazis aren't monsters, they are people by your own word. You shouldn't be deriding someone for defending their right to peaceably live in society. I don't really much see the point in this tangent anyway, seems like a pointless lefty "You are a Nazi because I said so"! argument.

You act as if being a monster and being a person are mutually exclusive.

[Admiral X]

Yeah, actual Nazis are monsters. Doesn't mean I'd advocate vigilante justice, and I do believe in free speech still, but I'm not sympathetic to actual bigoted assholes who believe in the purity of the white race and all that jazz. And even without the firm belief in free speech and civil rights for everyone whether I like them or not, there's also the more pragmatic angle of wanting to know who they are and what they're up to. All that is accomplished by making them too afraid to say their shit out in the open (aside from doing horrible damage to free speech for everyone else from the precedence), is driving them underground. And all getting them fired does is add to their victim complex and give them plenty of free time while they live off the government's dime. Probably make them feel like they have nothing to lose, too.

[Darth Wedgius]

The problem with "violence or threats of violence are only OK when we do it" is that it turns out to be a really hard sell. "By Any Means Necessary" might have found this out when someone had that perhaps unfortunate experience with car-fu. It's a shame, really; a teachable moment, missed. But I'm sure that the way we're going there will be other lessons upcoming.

[Robovski]

The mob will never turn on me...

Keep on thinking that.

[Draco Dracul]

The problem with "violence or threats of violence are only OK when we do it" is that it turns out to be a really hard sell. "By Any Means Necessary" might have found this out when someone had that perhaps unfortunate experience with car-fu. It's a shame, really; a teachable moment, missed. But I'm sure that the way we're going there will be other lessons upcoming.

It was a real teachable moment, and the lesson was that the all the talk of Nazis not really wanting to hurt people was bunk.

[Darth Wedgius]

It was a real teachable moment, and the lesson was that the all the talk of Nazis not really wanting to hurt people was bunk.

Absolutely! If a member of a movement is violent, all protestations of peace from all members of that movement can be disregarded! I believe we are in complete agreement on this one.

[TGLS]

Um, sorry, no.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I'm 1/4 ethnically Jew, my Jewish great-grandparents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s to escape persecution, so I really don't appreciate the insinuation that I am sympathetic towards Nazism.

...I'm sure you don't want to be viewed that way. I'm sure you don't think of yourself that way. But you are defending Nazis, sympathetically or not, in the name of "polite society."

I am defending human decency. Nazis aren't monsters, they are people by your own word. You shouldn't be deriding someone for defending their right to peaceably live in society. I don't really much see the point in this tangent anyway, seems like a pointless lefty "You are a Nazi because I said so"! argument.
.

This man is a Nazi because he says so in the article. That seems like a pretty good standard for it. I'm not saying that defending the rights of Nazis makes you a Nazi, I'm saying that saying "Hitler was a chill guy" and "Jews run the world" makes you a Nazi. I meant that you are defending Nazis, not that you unwittingly are one.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I'm 1/4 ethnically Jew, my Jewish great-grandparents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s to escape persecution, so I really don't appreciate the insinuation that I am sympathetic towards Nazism.

...I'm sure you don't want to be viewed that way. I'm sure you don't think of yourself that way. But you are defending Nazis, sympathetically or not, in the name of "polite society."

I am defending human decency. Nazis aren't monsters, they are people by your own word. You shouldn't be deriding someone for defending their right to peaceably live in society.

Living peaceably in society is ultimately incompatible with Nazi ideology. My intent was not to convey that Nazis are inhuman, but that, like the Videans or pirates on the high seas or Daleks, they have no respect for the lives of others outside of their narrow definitions. "Enemies of mankind" doesn't refer to inhuman here, it means that they are, by their attitudes, by their lack of respect for common humanity, in a de facto state of war with the rest of the world.

The very heart and soul of Nazism is that anyone who is not up to their standards by virtue of demographic, including things outside their control like race or orientation or ability, needs to die.